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Indonesian Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce

Satay (/ˈsæteɪ/, /ˈsɑːteɪ/sah-tay), or sate, is a dish of seasoned, skewered and grilled meat, served with a sauce – Wikipedia.

Well, it’s not quite a Wedding Wednesday this time, but I was reminiscing about our honeymoon and came across this picture. Sate Ampet. It’s a kind of satay one could find in Lombok Island in Indonesia. The sauce for this version is a bit complicated, but I remember seeing Mariska Lim’s version on YouTube via Maangchi, and it looks simple, so I decided to give it a try!

Heat canola oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Saute garlic and shallot until garlic is starting to be golden brown. Add the peanut butter and mix well. Add water until you reach desired consistency. Salt and pepper to taste, and mix in the sweet soy sauce! It’s a super important ingredient! I suppose if you don’t have it you can substitute with 2 Tbsp honey + 1 Tbsp soy sauce. Set aside.

Onto the chicken!

Cut chicken breasts into 3/4″ cubes and put 5 pieces to a skewer. I got 11 skewers total with 2 chicken breasts (6 skewers for me, 5 for the hubs :)). Smother the skewered chicken with about 1/3 of the peanut sauce.

I don’t have an actual grill, so my turquoise Le Creuset Grill Pan did the job. Brush grill pan with cooking oil and heat up for 2 minutes. Grill the chicken skewers and make sure to turn them every few minutes to get even cooking on all sides. I also brushed more peanut sauce onto the chicken for extra deliciousness.

This process felt like ages to me but in total it probably took about 10 minutes per batch. 1 batch being 5-6 skewers as my pan was not large enough to accommodate all 11 skewers at once.

Garnish and Serve

This is how your chicken skewers should look like after the grill pan treatment:

Smother more peanut sauce onto the grilled chicken skewers, squeeze 2 lime wedges for a hint of acidity, then sprinkle some “bawang goreng” i.e. fried shallots on top for extra crunch and deliciousness.

TA-DA!

By the way, you can serve the sauce on the side instead of smothering it all over the chicken skewers like I did. My husband really wish I had done that because to him the peanut sauce was a bit too much (whatever, I didn’t think so ;)). I’m a peanut-lover so I thought it was perfect.

I hope you give this recipe a try =) and if you get a chance to visit beautifulIndonesia, don’t forget to get the authentic “Sate” there, to be eaten with a view like this:

Thanks for your comment. I agree! This was a good substitute for being halfway around the world :)
I see that you’re from Holland. I bet you can get a lot of good Indonesian food in Holland!! so jealous!